J. Lapalme
Art.
bird, box & spindle
1995
Mixed Media Installation
L’Escalier unique,
1995
Painting/Collage (24"x 36")
Collection of the Nova Scotia Art Bank
© Julie Lapalme
nest
A liquid architecture is an architecture whose form is contingent on the interests of the beholder; it is an architecture that opens to welcome you and closes to defend you; it is an architecture without doors and hallways, where the next room is always where it needs to be and what it needs to be.
— Marcos Novak, ‘TransTerraFirma: After Territory’
The nest in the staircase becomes a symbol of that first childhood home; it is composed of bits of memory and associations, held together with string, which winds and courses through all those early experiences. The dream-house is fluid, creating rooms as you move through them; their plan informed by memories of houses you have been in before. Yet the dream does not follow a set blueprint: it is blue like water, a layered nest.
It creates an idea of the house, a memory-collage of different houses; its layout may contain a secret doorway or staircase leading to a room which had not previously existed in ’real‘ space. In the dream, the familiar landscape of the interior becomes a strange terrain that can be mapped and explored. The self is similarly divided and re-invented in dreams.
Family Tree l Pigeon: Cowardice l Cuckoo: Courage l Mme. Cowbird l L'Escalier Unique l Winding Staircase l House of my Own l L'Escalier qui monte